Exploring Paris past and present with a native.

Archive for the ‘Insolite’ Category

“Paris 26 Gigapixels is the name of the biggest assembled panoramic image of the world. It shows Paris in a very high definition. A gigapixel is 1 billion pixels! The image is a stitching of more than 2000 individual photos.”

The result is more than impressive. This awesome initiative has been talked about everywhere in the web during this past 2 weeks. It’s an interesting follow-up on our previous article on the views of Paris.

Now, just use this picture to pick your favorite place in the City of Lights and book a Paris Ambassador guide for a stroll there!

“Formerly, privileged persons alone could keep eating-houses in Paris. In 1765 a cook freed the public from this restraint, and having prepared a room for refreshments, placed over the door the following parody of a passage in Scripture ;—” Venile ad me qui stomacho laboratis, ct ego restaurabo vos.”

This attempt was successful and afterwards, when the Revolution brought many strangers to Paris, and the domestic habits of the Parisians were altered, these establishments increased every year, and are now to be found in all parts of Paris. In the restaurants there is generally presented a bill of fare called la carte, with the price of every article, aad some of these bills contain upwards of 300 dishes.

Ladies frequent the restaurants, as well as the cafes. In these houses there are generally private rooms called cabinets particuliers, in which two friends or a parly may dine in private. Besides the principal and second-rate restaurateurs, where the dinner is a la carle, there are other houses where dinners are served for a fixed sum per head. At the best of these houses a plentiful dinner, including wine, may be had for two francs. In the vicinity of the Palais Royal, however, and indeed in most parts of Paris, a dinner may be had for 30, 25, and even 22 sous.

To give an idea how luxury and economy may be combined, it is only necessary to observe, that soup, 3 dishes at choice, a dessert, bread, and a portion of wine, may be had for 22 sous. There is also another class of cooks in Paris, called traiteurs, or petty restaurateurs, whose principal business is to send out dishes, or dinners ready dressed to order. A family residing in lodgings, or at an hotel, will find it the cheapest mode to make a hargain with the traiteur, to be supplied for a fixed period, with a certain number of dishes daily, at any hour agreed upon.

A person may also dine at some of these places, but it is not considered comme il faut. The restaurants are nearly as numerous and as splendidly adorned as the cafes. To the latter it is customary to retire immediately after dinner, to take a demi-tasse of coffee, and a petit verre de liqueur, instead of sitting over the bottle as in England. Coffee may, however, be had at the restaurants.”

It is a little known fact, even to Parisians themselves, that almost half of Paris’ left bank is in fact… a labyrinth!

Of course, one has to go deep down under the surface (usually between 20 and 30 meters) to enter the maze of 500+ km of galleries, which are the testimony of the former mining frenzy that started in the Roman days and last up until just before the French Revolution.

Most of the galleries display an engraving or a plate of the corresponding street name above the ground. Some spots, more than others, bear the marks of History, like this bunker from WWII where you can still read instructions in German painted on the walls.

Unfortunately, Paris Ambassador won’t be able to take you to an underground tour: the IGC (Inspection Générale des Carrières), created by Louis XVI in 1777, is the official manager of “carrières souterraines de Paris”, which are now closed to the public.

But this doesn’t prevent the “cataphiles” from having a social life underground, including tagging, trekking and partying.

And, guess what, the 6 million dead buried in the “catacombes”, the official boneyard of Paris, don’t seem to care.

“Notre-Dame de Paris is the most satisfactory summary of hermetic science.” (Victor Hugo)

While Quasimodo was wandering around the heights of Notre-Dame, sharing his sufferings with the gargoyles, the archdeacon Claude Frollo was absorbed in the hermetic symbols of the front of the cathedral. And more particularly in one that no longer exists: the raven.

Victor Hugo describes Frollo « calculating the angle of vision of that raven which belongs to the left front, and which is looking at a mysterious point inside the church, where is concealed the philosopher’s stone ». Hugo adds that this « page of incantation written in stone » is the work of Guillaume of Paris. The latter is supposed to have concealed the stone (maybe Nicolas Flamel’s) in one of the pilars of the nave.

An other tradition, coming from Gobineau of Montluisant in the 17th century, tells about of stone raven in the arch of the central door; its eyes would face the place where are hidden “the sun beams that will turn into gold after one thousand years and diamand after three thousand.” The alchemist Fulcanelli, in his Mysteries of the cathedrals (1926), confirms this belief.

But several interrogations remain. First, who really was Guillaume of Paris? There was a bishop, Guillaume of Auvergne (theology teacher and bishop of Paris from 1228 to 1249), who would correspond to the name given by Hugo. But little is known of his alchemical or esoterical vocation, or his contribution to the building of the cathedral, except that he gave the south tower bell. The name of the bishop Guillaume Chartier pops up too, but doesn’t fit the dates of the building of Notre-Dame. (he died in 1472 whereas the cathedral was almost achieved at the end of the 13th century). Or may it be Guillaume, great inquisitor of Paris, whom Philippe IV missionned in the infamous date of October 13th, 1307 to arrest all the Templars of the kingdom of France?

Would the philosophers’ stone be a symbol of the mysterious treasure of the Templars, subject of all the greed and all the fictions throughout centuries?

Then, the raven itself no longer exists (provided it ever existed), like many other architectural pieces from the front of the cathedral. Hugo writes that it was located on the left portal, the portal of the Virgin, but where exactly? Must one consider the dove medaillon, allegory of Humility (in which Fulcanelli sees the raven of the alchemists), a symbol of the materia prima and of putrefaction? Or maybe one of the doves of the portal of the Virgin? “In this part of the hall was once sculpted the main hieroglyph of our practice: the raven. Major element of the hermetic blazon, the raven of Notre Dame has always had a strong attraction on the peat of the blowers, for an old legend said it was the one lair of a sacred treasure.” (Fulcanelli, op. cit.)

One tradition tells about the Wise Virgins inside the right arch of the central portal, under the Last Judgment scene; one of them, with an explicit gesture, is supposed to be pointing at the stone bird. But the details are indistinct and the texts remain a bit blurry between esoteric symbolism and architectural reality. Can one exclude a secular interpretation of the word “raven”, which indicates in architecture a projecting element of stone, wood or metal that supports a beam or a girder?

Notre Dame de Paris has long been a meeting point for alchemists who would gather under the portals of St Marcel, St Anne and the Last Judgment. Yet is it more than this “book of stone” which Hugo wrote about? Did its stones contain some unconceivable treasure? Had the father of Esmeralda made his heroine the embodiement of the “emerald of the wise” or the “philosophers’ mercury” of the old spagyric tradition?

Let Gerard de Nerval and his “Golden verses” have the final word:

Often a hidden god inhabits obscure being;
And like an eye, born, covered by its eyelids,
Pure spirit grows beneath the surface of stones!